Daniel Buren

From
23/11/2011
to
14/01/2012

Lisson Gallery presents an exhibition of new site specific and situated works by Daniel Buren, France’s most influential living artist. His first solo show in the UK since 2009 will include a large scale installation and outdoor work.

For over forty years Buren has examined the role of the gallery as a supposedly neutral space. He creates works “in situ”, by working within the context of existing architectural, spatial and social elements.

Since the 1960s Buren’s critical analysis of painting -attempting to refine the act to an elemental form - led him to find what is now a trademark “visual tool”, the use of 8.7cm wide white and coloured vertical stripes.

Once chosen for its anonymity and neutral presence, the stripe has become a signature for Buren’s work. Buren explains: “The visual tool is no longer a work to be seen, or to be beheld, but is the element that permits you to see or behold something else”.

Buren's Columns

For his exhibition at Lisson Gallery, Daniel Buren developed A Perimeter for a Room (2011), a new work in situ for the gallery main space. The work traces a line following the full perimeter of the space.

The horizontal transparent Plexiglas panels coloured with self-adhesive vinyl, lined up sequentially at a set height along the walls, alter our perception of space by introducing a new height within the room and by washing the walls with coloured shadows.

While the work uses a familiar vocabulary in Buren’s oeuvre: colour, light and black and white 8.7 cm stripes, A Perimeter for a Room defines an entirely new system in its treatment of interior space that opens the way for new developments.